Step one(thru a 1000) for getting a dem president elected:

Get a third party consevative to run, on immigration and deficit. Other than that-there will never be a democratic president again.

In the near term it is almost completely irrelevant as to whether Zuniga tears his party apart in his effort to distill it down to the truest of believers willing to toss Molotov Cocktails at every Republican - as long as Dems are weak on national security, they'll lose.

In the longer run, of course, it does matter - assuming western civilization and the U.S. survive the war on terror - voters will want a viable choice, but Zuniga's efforts will leave them a choice between Republicans and the remnants of a Democrat Party acting looking and acting like a bunch of Haight Ashbury hippies protesting the war while stoned on LSD.

In the near term it is almost completely irrelevant as to whether Zuniga tears his party apart in his effort to distill it down to the truest of believers willing to toss Molotov Cocktails at every Republican - as long as Dems are weak on national security, they'll lose.

Those aren't contradictory elements in your point. Hillary is trying to steer a course that projects strength on national security, and the faithful are turning on her. Thus, in as much as tacking to the right impacts her fundraising and ability to get through the hard left to the nomination, it could be quite relevant in the near-term.

Shhh... "Never interrupt your opponent when he's making a mistake."

They can't hear me, they're screaming too loud.

Bill, get his name right, and learn a little about hispanic culture at the same time. It's not "Zuniga"; it's Moulitsas. You remind me of the idiots who refer to the time when China was run by Tse-Tung. Well, wing-nuts are never that smart though, so what should I expect.

Thought: is there some deeper meaning to be obtained from the influence of conservative bloggers on the GOP and that of the liberal left bloggers on the Demos?

Conservative bloggers played a role in forcing the Admin. to scrap Meiers, who (1) had few qualifications, indeed might not have survived confirmation hearings and (2) wasn't very conservative. Instead, they got a fairly conservative and well-qualified candidate who was confirmable.

Liberal-left bloggers are pushing the Demos into a confirmation fillibuster that is simply not winnable (as they themselves admit).

"My name is Markos Moulitsas Zúniga. I was born on September 11, 1971." So begins Mr. Moulitsas' biography from his own website. Mr. Kim might learn to read before suggesting anything to others.

The really funny thing abut Kos is that he says he's "tactical, not ideological." So, apparently he's not only focused on winning to the exclusion of thinking about whether what they're fighting for is actually a good idea, he's completely failing anyway.

You mean he was born on 9/11! Hmmm very interesting...

Bill,

Point well taken, but I'm not at all sure many would really believe Democrats nominating Hillary would mean they were serious about national security (e.g., sufficient to convince centrist, swing voters), most of all the Democrats. After all, this is a party that voted Lieberman, out of a field of eleven, out of the primaries early in favor of ten other candidates all much weaker than he on the security issue. I don't think Hillary or anyone tacking anywhere close to Bush and the Republican position on security is going to get close enough to the nomination to sniff it - with one caveat - Hillary has sufficient star power within her party that, like Nixon in '68, she may be the only able to run the gauntlet. If she does, it most certainly will be despite any noises she makes regarding a robust national security - but not sufficient enough to win outright. And her acquiescence to the Kos gang regarding the filibuster is not a good sign she's prepared to take them on, let alone lead on security.

1) Dems filibuster
2) GOP breaks filibuster in short order
3) GOP exploits filibuster to maintain congress in mid-terms
4) Bush gets a 3rd SCOTUS nomination (replace one of the libs on the court)
5) Kos blows his top when Bush is able to ram through a nominee that they REALLY don't want, like Janice Rogers Brown or Miguel Estrada

Jong-Il Kim -

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using his full surname, and yes, I'm aware of the functional distinction y aun puedo hablar y leer espanol, pendejito!

What's it feel like to be so aggressively wrong, so publicly? I mean, that's got to sting right? Is there a shame reflex, or did that die a long time ago, a casualty of repetitive stress injury?

Tim -

Point well taken, but I'm not at all sure many would really believe Democrats nominating Hillary would mean they were serious about national security (e.g., sufficient to convince centrist, swing voters), most of all the Democrats.

A. In politics, to an underestimated degree, perception is reality, and folks have very short memories. Hillary has been playing the game so well these past 5 years or so, I almost look kindly on her, comparatively. The country could do worse from the D's. Much worse. But no, I don't think she would win.

B. More importantly - whether you think Hillary is sincere about defense or can even convince a majority that she is - is almost besides the point we're discussing here. Why? Because the bigger story here is, the extreme left of the Democratic Party seemingly won't let ANY candidate TRY to show comparable moderation/strength, whether it's Hillary or Virginia Gov. Tim M. Kaine.

this issue could put the final stake in Dems if the GOP jumps on it:
http://www.hotsaucelive.com/2006/01/who-is-responsible-for-veterans.asp

If Kos did not exist, it would be necessary for Rove to invent him.

To an extent the actions of the left-blogosphere are a result of their being out of power. When a party is in power the general public tends to rally around the authority figures, and those authority figures usually have something on the ball about getting elected. When out of power the party activists have more diffuse or no leadership figures and may collect around the strident but clueless. You could see some of the same dynamic at work in the late 90's on the right.

Anyway, a lot of the pols out there tend to be backslapping, get-along guys for a reason. At the national level winning usually requires a coalition of multiple interests who, if not exactly at each other's throats, are at least indifferent and possibly suspicious of the other members. It's hard to put together a coalition like that by subtraction, and kos and his ilk are all about the subtraction of deviant elements.

There's a self-awareness problem too: the center can move, though usually not tectonically, and the Kos faction appears to believe that the center has shifted so far toward them that they are able to appeal to centrists. I don't think they believe they're moderates ("liberal and proud of it" is more the sense I get), but they don't seem to realize how far from moderate they are.

The other alternatives I see are that they've overlooked the fundamental characteristic of medium they use - that they're not behind any kind of curtain, we can see every move - or that they're just so excited about getting Democratic leaders to go along with some of their views/policy proscriptions & prescriptions that they don't care about their long-term effects on electability of Democrats. It's weird. Are they Perot?

In politics, to an underestimated degree, perception is reality, and folks have very short memories.

Their memories were so short because no on ever reminded them of what happened before. That is the beauty of the blogosphere. Before is was difficult or impossible to remember what happened. It was on the bottom of a tack of newspapers in the library somewhere. But no more. We're the institutional memory that was absent in the past.

Kos and his ilk are convinced that they can re-invent the party much like Goldwater and the conservatives did in 1964.

Let's compare the situation between then and now:

In 1964, most Americans identified themselves as conservatives and at least half of those lived in the South and were solid democrats. Republicans at that time were the Wall Street and Park Avenue variety. FDR had co-opted the South with his New Deal programs and Social Security. He solidified the whole country during WWII. Eisenhower won the presidential election as a Republican, but he wasn't a long time party member.

Goldwater was both a social and fiscal Republican and disliked the government largesse created by FDR and to some extent, Ike. Even Kennedy was a conservative at the time. Goldwater knew that if he could get the south back ino the Republican party, he could start rebuilding the party. The civil rights movement was just starting to reach it's zenith. The southern Democrats were very much anti-segregation and were not happy with the Democratic party and were looking for somewhere else to go. Although the Republican party was pro -integration and indeed passed most of the civil rights legislation, the southern Democrats were so upset that they started joining the Republican Party. Except for civil rights, the southern Democrats were in agreement with the Republican Party on most other programs. Since politics does indeed make strange bedfellows, the south started becoming conservative. This became an avalanche during the late sixties and seventies when the Democrats mistakenly sided with the anti-war crowd. By 1972, the Republicans were getting the presidential votes to lead Nixon to a landslide, mainly due to southern voters. At the same time the local governments in the south were still mainly Democrat, however, the terrible Carter presidency started to change that situation. By the time Reagan started to run for the Presidency, the perfect storm happened The southern Democrats suddenly turned Republican, while the rest of the country remained conservative. By 1994, the whole south had become Republican and all southern Democrats who had not swithed were thrown out of office and replaced by Republicans. Suddenly there were more voters identifying themselves as Republicans than Democrats. This was the first time since the late twenties that this phenomenin had happened. Republicans have held congress since 1994, except for about a 10 month period in 1991 when Jumpin' Jim Jeffords gave the Democrats the majority for a short period of time. Now Republicans enjoy a substantial majority in both houses and, of course, the presidency.

The Kos crowd looks at what the conservatives did and hope to duplicate it. It will not happen. Only about 21% of Americans identify themselves as liberals. As they drive the party more to the left, any conservative Democrats who did not come over with Reagan will shortly become Republicans. There will be no conservative base. Because the lefties are so repugnant, most moderates will now become Republicans,or,at least vote that way.

The Kos revolution is dead before it gets started and will lead the Democratic Party to near oblivion. It will take years for the Democrats to get enough voters back to even consider themselves a viable party.

It's kinda funny reading you folks talking about my shitbag junior senator... Miz Hillary.

A whole lotta you don't understand she's blown her Upstate bonafides, and may face a fight this time ot.

It is a shame that the Dems have marginalized themselves like that. Any one-party system is a recipe for corruption.

If the Democratic leadership only could differentiate between a vocal fringe and the quiet, substantial center... A true test is what they do with Howard Dean.

Things will be worse after 2010 when the Census reapportions power from blue states to red states due to the demographic shift out of the blue states. Additional power will drop into the hands of House Republicans without any effort on their part. The Dems are not just digging themselves a deeper hole, demographics is plowing in more dirt around the hole.

I actually try to read left leaning blogs (and even Jonathan Alter, heaven help me) in order to get points of view different from my own. The venemous, vulgar, ad hominem argument that I see as well as the angry, hateful, repulsive rhetoric used throughout the anti-Bush left simply confirms my own prejudice that much of the opposition to Bush's liberation ideology is unhinged and illiberal. I don't want confirmation of my prejudices! I want reasoned logic, but it's just not there.

"We'd like to get on with building a viable two-party system from the ashes."

Amen. The damage Vietnam did to Democratic resolve to wage war in defense of vital American interests is . . . fatal. The party is locked in a 1972 self-hating McGovern mindset that won't go away even after 9/11. It's clearly outlived its usefulness and time.

To me the question is whether our political system is too ossified to allow the emergence of a new party, like the Republicians replaced the Whigs in the 1850s. http://www.earlyrepublic.net/whigs.htm

Joe Lieberman, you could be the start of something big if you start thinking outside the box. The zealots in your party don't want you anyway so what's the poing in staying? You might be able to do something really useful by turning independent and trying to start a party to replace the wreckage that is the Democrats.

Their memories were so short because no on ever reminded them of what happened before. That is the beauty of the blogosphere. Before is was difficult or impossible to remember what happened. It was on the bottom of a tack of newspapers in the library somewhere. But no more. We're the institutional memory that was absent in the past.

I think you're seriously overestimating the reach of the blogosphere there, John. The overwhelming majority of voters have never even read a blog post and never will. Most voters are people like my wife. She's never read a blog, doesn't read the paper, and only watches cables news if something spectacular like 9/11 or the OJ chase is going on. To most people following the news means occasionally watching their 10PM local news and chatting to other people. Blogs can document all they want, but most voters will never hear of it unless the MSM picks it up and runs with it.

Don't make the Kos mistake and think we're mainstream or at all representative of the general public. The blogosphere, from Kos and Reynolds down to lowly blogless commenters like me, consists almost entirely of people who closely follow the news and are very comfortable with internet technology. We're a tiny subset of a tiny subset of the country's population.

SeanH. Don't be so quick to devalue our blog currency. Remember, it was the Swiftboat blog that brought down John Francois Kerry.

I contend there HAS been a tectonic shift. John Kennedy (NOT one of my favorites) was more conservative than, say 75% of active pols today; somewhere between Lieberman and GWB (Maybe right of GWB?). The near-left were traditionally strong on national defense. Their numbers have dwindled to near nothing. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Cons, while consistently stronger than the left as a whole on defense, softened on domestic policy, at least enough to give LBJ's "Great Society" experiment enough rope to grind itself to pieces. Most of America has finally awakened to the, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life.", truism.

Truly tectonic shift back to the right is underway. American socialism is on its way out, thank G-d. This is what has the moonbats barking! The ole pendulum swings slowly, slowly. Peace through strength! Negotiate with your enemy with your foot on his neck!

It's entertaining to watch, tho. If only Cindy will really challene DiFi, it would be better than Idol, Lost, & Desperate Housewives combined!

Hillary is not special. She will not get my vote. But, she will get vote of everyone in the democratic party. All kossacks will vote for her (by putting fingers on their noses). They will have no choice - they will say after their vote. Hillary has them in the bag.

AKB

I'm not trying to devalue blog currency, just saying that the audience that blogs reach directly is pretty darn small relatively. Blogs have influence, but the for the most part that influence is limited to how much they can steer the MSM or politicians. What really hurt Kerrey with the swifties wasn't their blog it was their commercials and Fox News, Rush, and Hannity picking up the ball and running with it.

Rathergate is another good example. Bill, Charles Johnson, and the Powerline guys did fantastic work on that, but their blogging didn't lead directly to Rather's resignation. That happened because once they'd exposed what had happened and laid it out for people to see the MSM had a great story to run. If it had stayed in the blogosphere CBS could have whitewashed it, but once Charle's graphic went out on Fox News millions of people saw the CBS story was bogus.

All I'm saying is that a lot of people read blogs, but that audience is tiny compared to the MSM's. Rush Limbaugh alone probably reaches more people in a week of broadcasting than Kos and Instapundit combined do in a year. In order to influence the general public blogs need to have a story to tell that's compelling enough to be picked up and driven home by the MSM. I just don't think Clinton inconsistencies fits that bill. If people think Kerrey got preferential media treatment just wait until you see Hillary's.

I also think relative smallness of the blog audience size is what's going to save the Dems eventually. In time they're going to finally realize that cuddling up to hundreds of thousands of extreme-left blog readers isn't worth the way they're alienating tens of millions of potential voters. They'll be a viable party again as soon as they realize that they'll gain votes by moving back to the center and marginalizing the extreme left. I mean what are folks like Kos and Michael Moore going to do, vote Republican?

Rathergate is another good example. Bill, Charles Johnson, and the Powerline guys did fantastic work on that, but their blogging didn't lead directly to Rather's resignation. That happened because once they'd exposed what had happened and laid it out for people to see the MSM had a great story to run.

I agree, and that was exactly why I cut quickly to grab the forensic expert angle - to inject it quickly into the MSM. You're dead-on about blogs being a spark to MSM coverage, and therein lies their ability to steer parties and national events. I'm not sure that the left-wing has grasped this concept yet. They exert power over politicians themselves, but not the media effectively - as a vehicle to drive a given narrative into the broader consciousness. Part of the reason is that they don't pick compelling narratives. (think Jeff Gannon)

Today's Dem Party is a dead-person-walking.
The KosKidz are symptoms of acceptance and rebirth. Will the new party support 99% of the Kos-agenda or 1%?
I suspect more like 1%. Nonetheless this a natural process (ultimately) of renewal. It sucks to see how far off the path they have fallen; it's bad for our country and since the US has a lot of power, it is bad for the world.

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